The Fort Worth Stockyards comprised our favorite retreat from the quietness of nowhere at our northern Texan home.
Our first trip was when my daughter was about a year old.
Many trips later, we ventured one last time before we moved back to San Antonio.
Daily Longhorn Cattle Drive Reenactments
Especially fun was watching the longhorn cattle drive. Those l-o-n-g horns always amazed the kids (young and old).
Fort Worth Stockyard History
There’s even a museum section to learn more about cowboys and cattle, a major Texas industry.
Cattle drives of cowboy movie fame ended with the advent of the Texas and Pacific Railroad in 1876.
After all, time is money.
By 1890 the stockyards opened for business, functioning as an auction point for cattle from nearby ranches until 1950.
The Swift and Armour companies provided packing houses for the stockyards.
Nicknamed Cowtown and Wallstreet of the West, Fort Worth became the largest stockyard in the Southwest, selling over a million cattle a year.
By the 1950s trucking overtook railroads, allowing auctions closer to ranching operations.
Now a Tourist Site for history, shopping, and eating
The kids always loved the train ride on the Tarantula.
Besides a variety of restaurants, there were lots of cute cowboy shops to boot.
The record store provided auditory satisfaction to all the old songs of 1950’s country singers like Patsy Cline and Gene Autry playing while looking through selections to buy as a souvenir.
Other shops were filled with cowboy clothes for young and old. My son usually got a tshirt and my daughter often got a cowgirl hairbow.
Inside the remnant of the Swift offices we enjoyed eating pasta dinners at the Spaghetti Warehouse, a Victorian parlor of deliciousness. Enjoy a vintage menu here when the prices were great!
btw the first Spaghetti Warehouse opened in Dallas in 1972 in an1891 building that included a trolley!
Sadly most of these restaurants have closed.
